Recent spikes in prices of rice, soy, wheat and corn have driven many poor people in developing countries into hunger and malnutrition. In 2011, then World Bank president Robert Zoellick estimated that 44 million people fell into poverty in 2010 due to rising food prices, adding, “Food price inflation is the biggest threat today to the world’s poor…one weather event and you start to push people over the edge.”

The dots connecting world hunger, weather events and speculation on global financial markets are obvious. Yet, well-meaning officials at UN agencies, including the FAO, World Bank and IMF, are curiously blind. Instead, their many urgent meetings over the past three years have focused on raising more money to pay these rising prices for food staples, urging more productivity from agriculture and opposing nations curbing exports to protect their domestic foods …. MORE A VIP READ: The Economics of Curbing Speculation In Food, Water and Vital Resources

Will the children who inherit the Earth, and the potential issues that might still remain unresolved, feel the innate desire to preserve it? Or is our connection to nature being lost? This interesting and thought provoking concept was introduced to me by Kim Marshall McLean, a PhD classmate of mine at George Mason University and a NOAA Biologist. Kim is researching how exposure to the outdoors and the lessons learned in nature shape our understanding and even our intelligence. The sociological and environmental information gathered from this kind of research is far reaching and has implications for business as well. It is the hope that future leaders, especially those in business, will retain the close kinship with nature.

“The archeological record indicates that civilizational collapse does not come suddenly out of the blue. Archeologists analyzing earlier civilizations talk about a decline-and-collapse scenario. Economic and social collapse was almost always preceded by a period of environmental decline….

“No previous civilization has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural supports. Nor will ours. Yet economists look at the future through a different lens. Relying heavily on economic data to measure progress, they see the near 10-fold growth in the world economy since 1950 and the associated gains in living standards as the crowning achievement of our modern civilization….More….Two Views of Our Future: Science Versus Mainstream Economics : TreeHugger.

Nature – The Great Teacher

Michael O’Malley, vice-president of human capital at Sibson Consulting, took up beekeeping as a hobby and was surprised to find that it provided insights into his day job of advising on risk management.

WE NEED OUR BEES, ALIVE NOT DEAD

O’Malley writes in the Harvard Business Review that beehives are structured for long-term growth and as a result the pollen gatherers have become masters of risk management, unlike many “too big to fail” banks.

He writes: “When a colony gets too large, it becomes operationally unwieldy and grossly inefficient and the hive splits. Eventually, risk is spread across many hives and revenue sources in contrast to relying on one big, vulnerable “super-hive” for sustenance.”

Other lessons he has taken from his hobby are that queen bees do not appear to be subject to short-term quarterly pollen and nectar targets. “No queen bee is under pressure for quarterly pollen and nectar targets. The hive is only beholden to the long term. Indeed, beehives appear to underperform at times because they could collect more,” he writes.

Instead, decision-making is decentralised with individual bees empowered to take decisive action, bolstered by a “disciplined career development program”: “By the time bees are sent into the field, they are prepared — and, even then, novice foragers are frequently accompanied by veterans who show them how to efficiently and productively move among, and work, the flowers.”……More

Is This Insanity Or What?

The Objectification of Life – and The Huge Price We Are Paying

By @pdjmoo March 10, 2012

What is it about the human psyche that is willing to destroy the very foundations of life that humanity (and all species) depends upon for survival? Aren’t we supposed to be the most “intelligent” species on the planet? Sadly, facts are showing that we have far less understanding of the natural balances required for the planet than our arrogance and intellect would suppose.

It seems this disease is pervasive right across the globe. Like a swarm of locusts, we are ravaging and razing the earth to a point where life can no longer survive. We continue to over-fish our oceans until 90% of the big fish are gone, devastating the natural ocean systems and their biodiversity. Why? For profit and under the guise of “feeding the people” Overfishing leaves swaths of Mediterranean barren

We continue to ravage the forests that hold so much life that maintains the natural balance and biodiversity of our lands, often displacing indigenous peoples from their homes, creating dependency. For What? Profit and the hunger/demand for timber and clearing of forests for non-regional monocrops, destroying thousands of species and their habitat in the process. Our Disappearing Forests. (It takes 100 years to grow a 100 year-old tree)

With the climate talks in Durban seemingly headed for a train wreck, an innovative project is developing a new legal international framework for protecting the planetary ecosystem that could just be the most important legal initiative of our age.

It won’t matter by then because it will be, in the memorable words of Dr. James Hansen, “game over for the planet.” The narrow window we might just possibly still have to avert civilization-destroying climate change will close by 2015. To squeak through that window, we will have to begin ratcheting down our absolute emissions by then – in other words, reverse the direction we are currently on, which saw a 6% rise in emissions in 2010, despite the global economic downturn. Read the rest of this entry »

To many in both business and government, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power is truly moved into the hands of the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really?

The Century of the Self – 3:54 running time by Adam Curtis broken into 4 part is long, but worthwhile and tells the untold and controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How is the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interest?

The collective duty of humanity is to seek a balance with nature.

Everyone has to do their part; be more with less. The problem is not money, says Brazilian Leonardo Boff in this exclusive Tierramérica interview.

“The market is not going to resolve the environmental crisis,” says Boff, professor at Brazil’s State University of Rio de Janeiro. The solution, he says, lies in ethics and in changing our relationship with nature.READ ON: Tierramérica.